Training the Afghan National Security Forces

The U.S. in Afghanistan operates a Security Force Assistance Team (SFAT) 42.  SFAT 42 orders as stated in the Standing Operating Procedures Manual are clear and concise, to: "Improve the operational effectiveness of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) [and] expand security gains throughout he region [that will] ultimately lead to the ANSF defeating the insurgency."

The Afghan National Army and the Government of Afghanistan is not too keen on seeking to academically train conscripts to become useful battlefield medics.  They fear that once these trained medics have completed their educational training they will simply leave the army and venture into the civilian world to practise what they have learned.

There is good enough reason to fear this type of thing.  The Afghan Army and the Afghan National Police have a high rate of desertion.  Those who sign up to serve and decide extemporaneously that it is too dangerous, too difficult, too tiring, and the financial recompense entirely too meagre.  And sometimes desertion is for the purpose of joining the Taliban who have the reputation of paying better.

With Canada's withdrawal from Kandahar province, the U.S. has moved its forces in to fill the gap.  They are not doing precisely what the Canadians did, but they are attempting to leave the Afghan forces in better shape through training.  The SFAT 42 team has a component of medical specialists whose job it is to improve the skills of the Afghan National Army's field medics.

"I have been giving them classes on field sanitation and disease prevention.  They can stop hemorrhage, but disease prevention is where they fall down.  They are at about Vietnam level."  They also have no medivac helicopters.  It's a struggle to get the wounded to a hospital even if the field medics are capable of stopping the battlefield bleeding.

"It is one of the things we are asking them: 'How are  you going to get a casualty from Point A to point B if he is urgent surgical?'  They said, 'We won't.  Without American help, they die."

Reminiscing back to when Canadian troops were working with the Afghans, a Colonel Altafullah remarked: "They helped us a lot.  We were supported on missions in a similar way to the way the United States does now today.  But they also worked more on education and building schools and offices for different districts for us.  And I don't think that the 6th Kandak has received such good education from anyone else."

Richard Johnson, Combat Outpost Mizan, Zabul Province, southern Afghanistan, National Post